


The Last Step

by GilShalos1



Series: Sidelong Glances [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, Complete, Epilogue, Love, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, Original Character Death(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilShalos1/pseuds/GilShalos1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As time passes, things change - but some things are constant. </p><p>Authorial farewell to Dragon Age, and the characters of Sidelong Glances</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Step

 

 

 

Killeen Hanmount woke slowly, bones aching with the chill. She hauled the blankets higher over her shoulder and tried to burrow back into sleep, but even with three blankets and a fur coverlet, the bed was too cold to allow it.

 

Her bed was always cold, these days, without the warm weight of her beautiful man beside her, without his arms around her and his breath whispering against her neck.

 

She was used to it. Sighing, she flung back the covers and levered herself to a sitting position. The stone flags were icy beneath her feet, and when she gathered herself and stood the morning air was chill against her skin.

 

If she called, someone would come running, with slippers and a robe, to help her to the water-closet and then to her chair by the window, to bring her tea and rolls.

 

The tea would be either too sweet or not sweet enough. _None of them can get it right_.

 

She shuffled unaided to the water-closet to empty her bladder, a small triumph to start the day, splashed cold water on her face. To bathe properly she’d need assistance, unless she wanted to risk almost certainly going arse over teakettle as she stepped into or out of the tub, so she sponged beneath her arms and tottered back out into her bedroom.

 

A dark-haired, dark-skinned young woman turned with relief as Killeen opened the door. “Grandmama! I thought you’d gone missing!”

 

“I had to piss, girl,” Killeen said crossly. _Which one is this again? Melissandra? Radella? Mady? Clare?_

 

“I’m Elayne, grandmama,” the girl said kindly, correctly reading Killeen’s face, and of course, she must be. Melissandra was a stout woman of fifty years these days, with grey streaking her hair, and Radella was hundreds of miles away, serving as King Alaric’s adviser on magical matters. _And Mady_ _’s off playing diplomat in the Imperium … or is that Edolie?_

“You looked just like your mother for a minute there,” Killeen told Elayne in explanation, and got an incredulous look in return, because of course it wasn’t Elayne’s big-boned, fair-haired mother Nancy, Rutherford to her toenails, that Elayne looked like, but her paternal grandmother Clare. _Dorian and Evelyn and Josephine_ _’s daughter, all chocolate-coloured skin and cheekbones and magic._

_Like this one, who will set the world on fire soon, whether she wants to or not._

 

She didn’t bother to explain any of that to Elayne. _They all think I_ _’m getting forgetful,_ Killeen thought as the young woman hurried to help her with her robe. _They don_ _’t know that in fact, I remember too much_.

 

Too many names and faces, so many of them so similar, and so much like other faces and voices, long gone now.

 

She had never expected to live to be old, when she’d been a young woman in the uniform of the Kirkwall Guards, when she’d served the Inquisition … it was the Maker’s Blighted sense of humour that in the end, that she’d outlived all of them, all of them who were human, anyway.

 

She blamed Vivienne. _Vivienne, the Inquisitor, Fel_ … how many times had they poured reckless amounts of healing magic into her? _Inevitable that it had some side-effects._

 

“Not the robe,” Killeen said, as Elayne brought it. “Get my uniform.”

 

“Oh, do we want to go out today?” Elayne said brightly.

 

“I don’t know about you, girl, but _I_ _’m_ going out,” Killeen said. “No, not that shirt! The other one — Andraste’s arse, the _other_ other one!”

 

“But it’s patched,” Elayne protested.

 

“It’s the one I’m going to wear.”

 

It _was_ patched, many, many times, and it had long ago stopped smelling of smoke and sweat and hair pomade, but she would wear it anyway, and pretend that when she lifted the collar to her nose she could detect some faint trace of something other than cedar and laundry soap.

 

  _Very fine,_ she imagined Dorian saying, as Elayne eased Killeen into her jacket and knelt to hold her boots for her. _I told you that bone structure of yours would age fantastically well._

Killeen grunted at him. “Bone structure is all very well when you’ve got skin like a withered apple.” Elayne gave her a startled glance, but Killeen ignored it. They all thought she was a crazy old woman, anyway. If she told them that to her, it was not just the living who walked within Skyhold’s walls, they’d never let her go anywhere on her own ever again.

 

As far as they were concerned, when she sat in the sun in the garden with her eyes closed, she was dozing. They didn’t need to know that in fact she was listening: sometimes to Lady Montilyet and the Inquisitor having long-past arguments about cloth-of-gold and _appropriate formal attire_ that ended in laughter as Evelyn ticked Josephine into submission _;_ sometimes to Bull telling one more outrageous story that was just absurd enough to be true; sometimes to Blackwall laughing, as always the best and most appreciative audience for  her jokes.

 

He’d been the first to go. Joining the Grey Wardens in truth had been his way of making up for his long pretence, and he’d found peace in it — until his Calling started.

 

Even then, he’d been oddly serene as he took his leave of them, bound for the Deep Roads. _I_ _’ve had better than I ever deserved, my lady_ , he’d said to the Inquisitor as she wept. _And I thank you for it. And if He_ _’s merciful, I’ll see you at the Maker’s side_.

 

“I’m going up the hill today,” Killeen told Elayne.

 

“That’s nice,” Elayne said, not really listening.

 

 _Fine. She can_ _’t complain later that I didn’t tell her_. If she insisted Elayne pay attention, Killeen knew, the young woman would fuss and flap and insist on getting a horse and cart to take her up there. And it would take half the morning, and she’d be late.

 

 _Maker_ _’s shrivelled scrotum, as if I’m not competent to walk half-a-mile on my own_.

 

She sipped her too-sweet tea, ate a roll. She had no appetite for it, but the walk, she knew, would take more strength than she’d have on an empty stomach.

_It takes more strength every year._

And it had been so very many years, now.

 

Blackwall’s departure had left them all melancholy, and not only because they missed and mourned him. It had been the first unmistakable sign that, like everyone, they lived in time’s grip, at the mercy of his slowly closing hand. Greying hair, a little stiffness in the knees — their children grown and having children of their own — no longer just the markers of time passing but of time growing short.

 

But years had gone by and they were all still hale and well —

 

And then Killeen had noticed that Cullen was walking a little more slowly than he used to, that he was stopping, ostensibly to look around, at the top of staircases, that he more and more frequently availed himself of the chairs in the War Room rather than prowling around the table.  He still stood straight and strong, and although the burnished gilt of his hair was silver now, his eyes were still clear and his gaze keen, and she had convinced herself it was only the little signs of age — until the morning he rose from bed, swayed, and pitched headlong to the floor.

 

When she rolled him over he was pale as milk, drenched in sweat — and his lips were tinged with blue.

 

Years of lyrium, recklessly high does of it, and then the stresses on his body of breaking those chains, had weakened his heart. He confessed to her at last that he had been expecting it, had expected it long ago, had already lived longer than many Templars who had left the Order sooner and more easily than he.

 

Leliana sent a raven, and Fel rode back from tending to an outbreak of illness among the settlers trying to reclaim the Fallow Mire at a speed that nearly killed her horse.

 

“I’m feeling much better,” Cullen had told Fel, days after she’d laid her hands on his chest and wished him to _get better_ in a voice that brooked no argument. “Really, cubling. There’s no need to hover around here when you’ve your own work to do.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Fel had said fiercely.

 

Cullen had looked at her, and then reached out to take Killeen’s hand. “Ah,” he’d said. “So it won’t be long, then.”

 

He had not had any pain: Fel had been able to make sure of that, at least. His mind had stayed clear. He had only grown weaker and more tired, at first slowly, and then more and more quickly, until at the end it was like seeing a man fall headlong down a flight of stairs.

 

Then had come the night when, as the stars faded towards dawn, Fel had kissed Cullen’s forehead and murmured that she was going to get some sleep.

 

Killeen had heard her start to weep as she reached the stairs and known that it was time.

 

A few minutes later, Ursula and Thomas and their children had come upstairs, sent by Fel, Killeen had no doubt. They had wished Cullen goodnight, each in turn, each knowing they were saying instead _goodbye._

 

Killeen herself had not wept. She had lain down beside Cullen on the bed once they were alone, easing her arm beneath him so he could rest his head on her shoulder, her other hand lightly on his chest, and she had looked down at him smiling up at her and told him every nug joke she knew as the sun crept slowly high enough to send golden beams through the tangle of branches above them.

 

He had slipped away from her so quietly in the end that it was only the stillness of the great, strong, _good_ heart beneath her hand that let her know that he was gone.

 

She shook the memory away, reached for her walking stick, and levered herself to her feet. _I won_ _’t remember that today. That is not_ ** _this_** _day. I will remember the other times, the good times, the years and years and years we had together._

_Before the years and years and years I_ _’ve had alone._

 

Because after that they had all left her, one by one. Lady Montilyet of a cough that even Fel could not stop, and Lady Trevelyan just a few months later of what Killeen was convinced, whatever the healers said, was a broken heart. Varric and Sera had left Skyhold, after that, and Killeen never heard their voices echoing about her. She wondered sometimes if that meant they were still alive, for elves and dwarves lived long, long lives, or if it only meant that her imagination was not certain they were dead. She never heard Cole, either, but she had never seen him since the day they had carried the Inquisitor up the hill beyond the gates and laid her beside Josephine.

 

There was a great empty tomb in rebuilt Haven, where people _thought_ she lay. If they’d known the simple headstone marked only _E_ , her dates, and the word _Beloved_ was her real resting place, Skyhold would have been overrun with pilgrims.

 

Killeen made her way across the courtyard, not hurrying, conserving her strength, and paused at the gate, looking across the bridge at the bustling town beyond, at the long steep hill that rose above it. _There was no way Skyhold could have managed with even more people coming to visit, to trade, to stay._

_But we couldn_ _’t let her go._

 

So they had buried her themselves, up the hill with Josephine and Cullen, those of them who were left, and soon after that Varric and Sera had said their goodbyes, and Cole had gone without saying anything at all.

 

The bridge grew longer every time she crossed it, and the wind that whipped between the arches colder. Killeen hunched down in her cloak, grateful for its thickness, although it was worn in a few places now and had collected interesting stains over the years. It still kept her warm, as Cullen had promised it would, all those many years ago.

 

 _As warm as these old bones ever get, anyway,_ Killeen thought, making her way past the last of the buildings in the town and stopping for a moment to catch her breath in preparation for the long climb ahead.

 

Bull had been next, and it had been as he would have wanted — in battle, against a dragon. He’d lived long enough to see the dragon taken down, too. Not long enough to drink to it, and so Dorian and Killeen had done that together, in the _Herald_ _’s Rest_ , with Krem and Grim and Dalish.

 

The Chargers had stayed _Bull_ _’s Chargers_ , but Krem had been their commander. He’d died an old, rich man, and someone else now chose the contracts for the mercenary company who still called _Horns up_ before every battle, although none of them anymore knew why.

 

Vivianne lay in a great golden shrine outside Halamshiral, and Cassandra beside her husband the King in the royal crypt in Denerim. 

 

Leliana had slipped and fallen from the walls, one windy night. She was old, and frailer than she knew, everyone told each other: of course she must have lost her balance in the gusts.

 

Killeen kept her own conviction that Sister Nightingale had chosen to spread her wings and take flight firmly behind her teeth. She had known, the only one, that Leliana had begun to notice her memory failing, that she had come to rely more and more on Thomas to catch her increasingly frequent mistakes.

 

A few years after that, Killeen had gone looking for Dorian and found him still and cold in his chair in the library, an expression of surprise on his face.  She had buried him up the hill with the others, half a dragon’s tooth on a chain around his neck, and although she had been surrounded by the two sons and the daughter he had fathered and their own children, although Fel had stood with her arm around Killeen’s waist and Ursula was close beside her on the other side, Killeen had watched the dirt rain down in the grave and known herself, in a certain way, alone.

 

_The last one._

 

There was no-one left in Skyhold who remembered them, not the way she did, not really: remembered those early days at Haven, remembered the Inquisitor when she’d just been a fair, slim mage-girl with a mysterious mark on her hand, remembered Dorian with his feet on Cullen’s desk complaining about the quality of the wine and Lady Vivienne insisting that the end of the world was no excuse for a lack of hot water in her quarters. Cole, before he learned to stop startling armed people, Josephine managing to produce a formal dinner for noble visitors when supplies were so short they’d almost been reduced to boiling their boots. 

 

Remembered Cullen, when his hair had still been entirely gold, clinging on to the possibility of making up for his mistakes with fingernails and willpower.

 

Remembered the first time he’d smiled at her like a man seeing daybreak after an endless night. 

 

On _this_ day, it’d been. He’d smiled at her and taken her in his arms and kissed her for the first time on this very day. It was entirely possible that their daughter had been conceived on this very day, in the Inquisitor’s bed. Certainly not long afterwards, perhaps in his bed, or on his desk, or on the War Table … in those beautiful, glorious days of learning each other, loving each other, days she had thought were the very pinnacle of happiness and had been unendingly astounded to learn, in the years that followed, were only the prelude to a constant, unceasing upwelling of joy.

 

Killeen braced herself, and began to climb. _Mustn_ _’t be late._

 

Not long after they’d laid Dorian to rest, she’d started hearing them.  She supposed it was because she was … not _lonely_ , because that was not possible, not with Thomas and Ursula and their children and eventually their _grandchildren_ bringing every problem and grief to lay in her lap, not with Fel’s mages’ school and Stanton’s Seekers to guard them, not with the younger princes and princesses of Ferelden forever visiting and the steady trickle of pilgrims in and out of the castle.

 

Just yesterday, Killeen had heard one of those pilgrims point out the mages’ tower and tell another with great authority that it was called _the Inquisition_ because the mages here were so inquisitive.

 

She’d snorted, and not corrected the mistake. No, she was not exactly lonely, but she was most definitely the _last_ , and so it was perhaps no wonder that her mind had begun to bring them back to her, always just out of sight, around the corner or behind her shoulder. Often, they weren’t even talking to _her_ , and she supposed she was summoning half-overheard conversations up from the depths of memories, Cassandra complaining that Varric was altogether too slow with his latest book, Lady Trevelyan blistering the paint from the walls because she couldn’t find her favourite boots and was sure Josephine had burned them.

 

Sometimes, they _did_ talk to her. Dorian, looking over her shoulder as she watched recruits to the Skyhold Guard drilling in the courtyard and murmuring _delicious, **such** a pity I_ _’m dead_ when a particularly handsome one caught his eye. Vivianne, casting a critical eye over her as she hurried to a meeting. _You really should do something with your hair, darling. Grey can be very distinguished, but not if you cut it yourself with a knife._   Blackwall grunting wordless encouragement as she forced her aching bones through another circuit of the castle, refusing to let her Lieutenants beat her even if some of them were younger than her own children, or Bull roaring _get your shield up_ during drill.

 

Never Cullen, though. That was how she knew it was only her imagination, for surely, if there was a way to return from beyond the veil, nothing and no-one could have kept her beautiful, glorious man from her side. 

 

 For years after, she’d _seen_ him, or thought she did — out of the corner of her eye, crossing the Great Hall, at a distance, on the walls. _Memory and illusion_.

 

But his was the only voice she never heard, and she knew it to be because the part of her mind that tricked her into summoning up imaginary company knew that if she heard Cullen’s voice, she’d never stop listening to it — just as the same wise instinct made all her dreams of him blurry and indistinct, him always at some little distance from her, down a corridor, through a closed door, on the other side of a window or a curtain of sleeting rain.

 

_Otherwise I_ _’d have done nothing but sleep._

She’d cursed her innately sensible nature from time to time, as she’d cursed her unfailingly sound constitution, both condemning her to _go on_ rather than find surcease of sorrow in derangement or in death — but she knew it was just as well. _They_ _’ve needed me._

 

_They_ _’ve all needed me._

 

Panting up the last yards of the climb, she stopped to catch her breath, leaning on her stick. _Steeper every year_. Everything ached, but that was nothing new: everything always ached, these days, from the ankle she’d snapped breaking up a brawl in the town outside the gates the year after Blackwall had left to her gnarled, arthritic hands and her stooped shoulders.

 

She touched each headstone as she passed it, as she always did. _Hello, Dorian. Hey, Bull. Leliana. Hello, Josephine. Good morning, Inquisitor._ She greeted the ones not there, as well, in case they were listening: _How are you, Vivienne? Good to see you, Blackwall.  Morning, Cassandra._

Cullen’s was the last stone, highest up the hill. It hadn’t been planned that way, but it was fitting: Lady Trevelyan had led them, but it was Cullen who had taken on the burden of keeping them safe when they were here in Skyhold, standing guard so they could rest at peace in their home, and he watched over them still.

 

Killeen took the last step to reach it and brushed the stone with her fingers. _Hello, my darling, beautiful man._ Knees aching, she lowered herself down, half-falling the last little bit. _Well, shit. I_ _’m going to have to wait for someone to come find me to get up again, I suspect_.

 

That was a problem for later. She leaned her shoulder against the stone and looked back toward the castle. The sun had crept above the walls, although it had not yet warmed the chill from the grave’s marker. Killeen rested her head against it, and tried to pretend it was his shoulder, that they sat side by side.

 

 _Do you know what day it is?_ she asked him, although of course he knew. She told him anyway _. It_ _’s the day you first told me you loved me, the day I first told you I loved you. In a little while, it’ll be exactly sixty-seven years since the first time you kissed me._

_And not quite forty since the last_.

 

And, for once, as the sun strengthened and the stone she leaned against warmed a little, she heard his voice answer her. _A long time._

“Too long,” she agreed aloud. She could almost feel his arms around her, his hand stroking her hair. “Too long. Longer than I ever thought. I — I thought about joining you, you know.”

 

 _I know_ , he said.

 

“But I couldn’t. I was needed here.”

 

 _I know that too._ Killeen realised she must have fallen asleep and was dreaming, for she really could feel his fingers running through her hair, now, feel the warmth of his body as she leaned against his chest. _I_ _’m glad you didn’t. It took Fel a very long time to learn to be sensible._

Killeen laughed a little. “Yes, it did, didn’t it? And there was Ursula, and Thomas, and then mage-gift started breaking out all over among the Inquisitor’s grandchildren, although that’s hardly surprising given their heritage. And … always one more thing.”

 

_I know._

 

“I miss you so much!” she burst out, and the tears came. Desperately, she tried to stop them, because she would wake herself up if she went on like this, wake herself from the first time she’d felt his arms around her in an aching emptiness of forever.

 

 _Forgive me,_ Cullen whispered, holding her tightly. _The last thing I wanted was to leave you. The last thing I wanted was to cause you pain._

 

“I know, I know,” she sobbed. “Oh, my darling man, I know! It’s just been so long, so much longer than I ever thought, and it never stops, the loving you, the missing you, it never stops!”

 

 _And you_ _’re tired_ , he said. One hand moved to her back, rubbed small circles there.

 

She sighed. “And I’m tired.” _So very tired._

 

 _Close your eyes,_ he said. _Sleep._

 

Killeen shook her head. “Then I’ll wake up. And you won’t be here.”

 

 _I_ _’ll be here,_ he said. The soothing motion of his hand was irresistible, and Killeen felt her eyelids growing heavy. _I_ _’ll be here. Rest a little, my love, my darling. Rest._

She slept.

 

Woke with a great _thump_ of panic that she could have been so stupid as to lose even a second of time with him, no matter how tired she was, no matter that it was just a dream —

 

And realised that her head rested on a warm chest, that there was a strong arm around her shoulders. She took a deep breath and inhaled the smell of smoke and sweat and hair pomade. _Cullen._

 

Nestling closer to him, she realised that the movement brought no pain. Experimentally, she stretched, felt joints and muscles moving easily and as they should for the first time she could clearly remember. A glorious sense of well-being suffused her, a combination of peaceful contentment and boundless energy.

 

She raised herself on her elbow, not sure what her dreaming mind would show her. Cullen, as he had been the day she’d met him, young and unscarred? Cullen as he’d been on this day sixty-seven years ago when they’d found their way to each other, a little older, far more worn? As a man settling into hale middle age, watching Ursula earn her first sword with eyes that brimmed with tears of pride? As the white-haired, straight old man she’d cradled in her arms as he slipped quietly into his last sleep?

 

All of them, she realised, all of them at once: she could see the strapping young Templar, long clean limbs, golden hair undimmed, but there too was the man worn fine by the task of creating an army that could take on the best Corypheus could summon out of farmhands and craftsmen, and the man who’d knelt before her and offered her a grey stone ring. His skin was as smooth and unlined as the man she’d met in Kirkwall, but the old dear scar still bisected his lip, and in his gorgeous brown eyes she saw the tender wisdom of the man who’d raised two children with her. _Three if you counted Fel._

 

She hid her face against his chest. He was glorious and perfect, and it was unbearably cruel of the dream to show him so when she herself was wizened and wrinkled, shrunken in on herself like a dried-out apple.

 

She felt his fingers running through her hair. “Look at me, Killeen, my love, my darling. Let me see you. It’s been such a long time, and you’re so beautiful.”

 

And oh, how could her own imagination do this to her? “Don’t make fun of me,” she begged him, knowing she was really begging herself.

 

“Never, my love,” Cullen said. “Never. My love, if you won’t look at me, then look at your hand.”

 

She raised her head a little and looked.

 

The fingers clenched in his shirt were straight and smooth and unmottled by age, and the rings, stone and silver, which she had worn on a chain around her neck for years now, since her joints grew too swollen to force them past her knuckle, glimmered gently on her finger where they should be in the opalescent light.  Killeen flexed her hand, felt not even a twinge of pain, and raised it to her face, feeling the old familiar scars running over skin now smooth and taut.

 

Hands came into her field of vision, long and deft, callused and scarred: the hands that had put a smooth grey ring of stone on her finger and some months later, a slim silver one; that had caught their daughter as she emerged into the world; that had run so often through her hair, that had rubbed her feet when they ached and her back when she occasionally woke shaking in the night with the memory of old pain, old fears. That had so often touched and caressed her until she was one single blazing flame of desire.

 

They were holding a mug of tea.

 

Killeen took it, unsurprised, because this was after all the way of dreams. She breathed deeply of the scented steam, sipped, and tasted love like honey on her tongue. “Thank you.”

 

“I well remember what you’re like when you’ve just woken up,” Cullen said.

 

As soon as she’d finished the tea, he took the mug from her hand, rolled them over so she was beneath him and bent his head to kiss her. His lips were as warm and soft and firm as she remembered, his fingers as clever as they ran down her side and back up to cup her breast and flick her nipple. Desire flooded through her and —

 

She jerked her head back. “You’re not a demon, are you?”

 

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards and she couldn’t help reaching up to touch the place with her fingers, that tiny flicker of humour that in all the bad years she had worked so hard to win from him and in all the good ones that followed had presaged one of his lovely, whole-hearted laughs. “I’m not a demon.”

 

“How do I know? I mean, that’s obviously what you would say if you were, as well as if you’re not.”

 

And there it was, the easy, open smile she remembered. “That’s true. Let me see. Ah, there are these three gentlemen, well, they’re not actually gentlemen. They’re very large and muscular, these brothers, and — wait, you’re not supposed to know they’re brothers just yet. Anyway —”

 

“Cullen, that’s _terrible_ ,” she said, unable to keep from laughing.

 

“It can’t be _that_ bad, you find it funny already. Anyway, their fath — I mean, an old man comes in, and he goes up to the first gentleman and he says, I’ve had sexual relations with your mother. And then he goes to the second gentleman, and he says, ah, your mother has, um —”

 

He was scarlet. “He says, your mother’s sucked my cock,” Killeen supplied.

 

“Right. And, um, he goes to the third gentleman and he says, your mother and I have had, ah, relations in the Antivan style.”

 

“He says, I’ve had your mother up the arse,” Killeen said, and went on before Cullen could butcher the punchline, “and this fellow stands up, all seven foot five of him, and he puts one massive hand on the old man’s shoulder, and he says: Go home, Dad, you’re drunk.” She seized the front of his shirt and pulled him down to her for a fierce kiss. “You’re not a demon.”

 

“No,” Cullen said. “And you’re not dreaming.”

 

She’d half known it before he said it, she realised: the smell of him, of the grass and clover crushed beneath her, the solid familiar weight of him over her, the faint hint of golden stubble on his cheek — no dream could be so real.

 

Killeen turned her head and, through the blades of grass, saw an old, old woman with steel grey hair, in a well-worn bear-skin cloak and the uniform of the Skyhold Guards, leaning against the gravestone that said _Cullen Stanton Rutherford, Commander. Son, brother, father, husband, friend._

 

The woman’s chin rested on her chest, her hands folded in her lap. She might have been asleep.

 

But she wasn’t.

 

Killeen looked back at her beautiful, glorious man. “What happens now?” she asked.

 

Cullen took her hands and rose to his feet, drawing her with him. “It’s just a step from here.”

 

“The Maker’s side?” When he nodded, she snorted. “So you were right about everything, after all.”

 

He smiled. “Not quite everything,” he said. At the bottom of the hill, Killeen could see people hurrying toward them, running, Elayne in the lead. _They discovered I was gone_. She felt a pang at the thought of Elayne’s guilt, when they found the body by Cullen’s grave, for Fel and Thomas and Ursula, but she knew that though their sorrow would be real, it would be mild. _Old, old women do tend to die. They_ _’ve been expecting it for a while._

 

“Not quite everything?” Killeen asked as Cullen took her in his arms and the cold grey stones around them, the long grass, the warm summer morning all began to both brighten and fade at the same time.

 

He smiled, and whispered in her ear, “You were right about one thing.” Golden haze was all around them now, but Killeen was not afraid. She was in the arms of her darling, her gorgeous, her beloved, beloved husband, and whatever happened next was just fine with her so long as it happened to them both together.

 

“I was?” she asked.  

 

“You were,” Cullen said. He grinned at her as Skyhold faded completely away into the brightening air. “It turns out they _are_ at it like rabbits on the Golden Throne.”


End file.
